The New York department of the Jewish War Veterans reported today that, following filing by the American Nazi Party of a request for a permit from Skokie Village to stage its march on June 25, it was coordinating a campaign to bring thousands of JWV members to the Chicago suburb for a counter-demonstration.
Marvin Morrison, the New York JWV department executive director, said the Nazis filed their request for a permit on Monday. He said the New York department was taking “all necessary steps” to prepare a large counter-demonstration and that travel and housing arrangements for JWV members going to Skokie, home of 7000 survivors of the Holocaust, were being coordinated by the New York department in cooperation with the national office in Washington, D.C.
Morrison told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that mailgrams were sent yesterday to all 100,000 JWV members urging them to plan to go to Skokie, in the event Skokie Village officials approve the requested permit. The mailgram said that Skokie Village officials had been asked to set up a tent city in Skokie for the JWV members use June 23-27. The permit ordinance requires a 30-day waiting period before the organization receiving the permit can implement it.
Morrison also reported that the JWV department was making plans for a mass rally in New York City to coincide with the action in Skokie. He also reported that the plans for the mobilization would be discussed at the department’s convention June 1-4 in Kiamesha Lake.
ISSUE INVOLVED IN CONTROVERSY
There are two issues in various stages of litigation in the Skokie controversy. One is a set of three ordinances approved by the village which bon groups which preach hatred or wear military style uniforms from marching in Skokie, or to pass out hate literature, and requiring any group planning to demonstrate to post $300,000 in liability insurance. The Chicago Nazis have said they will wear Nazi style uniforms with swastika armbands.
The other is a bid for an injunction against the march sought by Sol Goldstein, a Skokie resident, Holocaust survivor and a leader of the Public Affairs Committee of the Jewish United Fund of Metropolitan Chicago.
On March 17, Judge Bernard M. Decker of the Federal District Court in Chicago, ordered a temporary ban on the proposed Nazi march to allow Skokie officials time to appeal his earlier ruling holding the three ordinances unconstitutional. Subsequently, a three-judge panel of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago sustained Decker’s ban.
APPEALS TO SUPREME COURT EYED
Jerome Torshen, Goldstein’s attorney, told the JTA, also in response to a telephone inquiry, that the Illinois Supreme Court, which had ordered dismissal of Goldstein’s petition for an injunction against the Nazi march, had stayed that order to allow Goldstein to petition the U.S. Supreme Court for a review of the State Supreme Court decision. He said the effect of the State Supreme Court stay was to return Goldstein’s injunction bid to the jurisdiction of the Circuit Court of Cook County.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
